Today in History (1862) - The U.S. government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation. On the same day in 1865, the Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000 black troops, granting them freedom with the consent of their owners. Lee surrendered a few weeks later.

September 30, 2007

You Know You're Deep in Blawgging When...

by PG

You wince at seeing

"The lower courts, and maybe even the executive branch of these states, may say, let's wait till we hear definitively from the U.S. Supreme Court before we rush forward with an execution," said Doug Merman, a law professor at Ohio State University.

in an MSNBC story. Other people who hear about budget cuts in the news media bemoan the loss of foreign bureaus and the overuse of wire stories, but what I really hate is the reduction in copy-editing.

And for the best attempt at please-make-my-inaccessible-subject-interesting, I nominate Georgetown prof David Langevoort, who referred to the Supreme Court's review of Stoneridge Investment v. Scientific-Atlanta decision as "securities law's Roe v. Wade."
Decision on whether to apply Central Bank of Denver's interpretation of 10(b) to the situation in which the defendants may have been more than aiders and abettors
≠
decision on whether to apply Griswold/Baird's interpretation of the Constitution to the situation in which a woman sought not to preclude pregnancy but to end it once commenced. Neither an affirmation nor a reversal in Stoneridge is likely to do more than either increase the disclosure and litigation burden on corporations or make Barney Frank hold forth on the need to change the statute to make clear that it applies to all reporting companies and not just the one with which investors have privity for their suit. But unless we're going either to extend Company X's duty of disclosure to its shareholders, to all those who have dealings with Company X that might allow Company X to be untruthful, or to overrule a quarter century of precedent on what Rule 10b-5 means, Stoneridge really looks like a slam-dunk. The 8th Circuit disposed of it in 9 pages. Then again, there's nothing like seeing the Washington Legal Foundation's explanation that the Supreme Court should protect investors by disabling them from suing companies that engage in deceptive transactions to make me think that the plaintiffs must have some argument in their favor.